For education and branding, BuyMusic.com finds TV advertising fits the bill

Online advertising may be the fastest and most direct way for companies selling on the web to find online shoppers inclined to buy online, but to reach beyond that built-in audience and access a more mainstream population, some are turning to mainstream media. The challenge of reaching new audiences--and the appeal of a mass medium such as TV--is especially great when not only the online sales channel but also the product itself is less broadly familiar.

Digital music site BuyMusic.com faces both issues in growing its audience, one reason it went with TV spots when it launched in July. It had the double tasks of educating a wider audience about the relatively new category of downloadable digital music sales, and also positioning its brand within that category.

“Offline advertising of online properties is necessary,” Elizabeth Brooks, vice president of business development, tells Internet Retailer. “Though the penetration of digital music usage and the demographics are broader than most people think, there is still some fear of technology. It’s incumbent on us to educate people that using digital music is not scary or hard to do. You can take it with you, mix it up and have fun with it. That`s a message we need to get out.”

BuyMusic.com’s TV ads captured that sentiment by depicting a diverse group of people enjoying music mixes of their own choice, in a deliberate spoof of a competitor’s ads that depicted digital music users as exclusively hip, young and urban. BuyMusic.com’s ad tagline, “Music downloads for the rest of us,” underscores the point.

Brooks estimates the media buy which initially ran aggressively and then tapered down over six weeks was about $1.25 million. BuyMusic.com contained costs by producing the three 30-second spots mostly with in-house staff and confining the media buy to less-expensive cable TV. The ads were considered so entertaining by some cable outlets that they ran them repeatedly at no charge when they needed filler. “For $1.25 million, we got about $6 million in advertising,” she says.

While not disclosing numbers, Brooks says the company compared traffic to the site from regional markets where the cable TV ads ran to areas where the ads did not run and found the spots “effective.” She points out that the initial campaign was more about education than the company’s product specifically. Any future TV advertising, plus an online campaign it plans to launch next year, will incorporate a more aggressive call to action, she adds.

“The future of this business is in the person who loves music but hasn’t really committed to digital music interaction,” says Brooks. “Those people are probably on the couch in front of the tube.”